For a little background; life threw me a curve ball this spring with my meat bird raising. I had a good rooster who was 1/2 broiler and 1/2 naked neck. Last year he had 100% fertility and I got lots a nice big birds from breeding him. He was good with people and the hens seemed to like him. This spring, however, none of the eggs in the coop were fertile. After spending some time observing, I realized that "big boy" had, in fact, gotten too big and top heavy to successfully mate, and was actually starting to injure some of the hens. Had a caught wise a little earlier, I would have saved one of his off-spring to replace him. Ce la vie. It got me rethinking my plans and wondering if I should just focus on a single dual purpose breed.
Around the time big boy was becoming gumbo, I was hatching out some shipped eggs with the thought of bringing some new genetics and color into my layers. Eight weeks later, I now have 3 very nice looking maran cockerels, and 2 maran pullets. I also have a cream leg bar cockerel and a couple of CLB pullets.
So I now have the option of using marans as dual purpose birds. I fully understand that heritage birds are smaller, but that is OK. But, I'm curious as to whether others have raised them as such and how they felt about taste, rate of growth, hardiness, temperament etc. To be honest, I'm not that excited about maran as a breed, and find myself thinking about Sussex, Orpington or Dorking as more interesting options if I would to go forward with a single breed.
But, since I have these marans, I'm considering trying them out for a year or two. My other option would be to keep the little CLB cockerel just for the fun of breeding some olive eggers and keeping my broodies happy, and then look to replace him next year with a breed I'm a bit more excited about.
There no right answer, but I always enjoy hearing what the people here have to say.
Around the time big boy was becoming gumbo, I was hatching out some shipped eggs with the thought of bringing some new genetics and color into my layers. Eight weeks later, I now have 3 very nice looking maran cockerels, and 2 maran pullets. I also have a cream leg bar cockerel and a couple of CLB pullets.
So I now have the option of using marans as dual purpose birds. I fully understand that heritage birds are smaller, but that is OK. But, I'm curious as to whether others have raised them as such and how they felt about taste, rate of growth, hardiness, temperament etc. To be honest, I'm not that excited about maran as a breed, and find myself thinking about Sussex, Orpington or Dorking as more interesting options if I would to go forward with a single breed.
But, since I have these marans, I'm considering trying them out for a year or two. My other option would be to keep the little CLB cockerel just for the fun of breeding some olive eggers and keeping my broodies happy, and then look to replace him next year with a breed I'm a bit more excited about.
There no right answer, but I always enjoy hearing what the people here have to say.